Since I was sixteen, I’ve been keeping haunted house journals. It might be the nerdiest thing I do, but I imagine there’s a chorus somewhere caroling, “That’s debatable.” So at the end of every September, I dust off my dork tome and begin penciling in my haunted house calendar. (I know, I really need to take up ant farming or something.)

I had the opportunity to add a new entry to my current Goosebumps diary when my new friend Niffer asked if I wanted to hang out, perhaps go to one of those haunted casas I’m so hot for. Christina happened to be visiting as well, so I deemed it the perfect night to go to my all-time favorite haunted house, Victory Haunted School in Elizabeth, PA. Two reasons: 1. I only like going to that one with at LEAST two other people because it freaks me out that badly; 2. I wanted Niffer’s first haunted house as a Pittsburgh resident to be really fucking supreme.

On the thirty minute drive, we embroiled ourselves in talk of men perfumed with the stench of cigarette rolled in dog shit, and Christina pumped Niffer for all kinds of pertinent information to ensure she wasn’t KGB. I made Christina ride in the back because that’s where bitches belong, and she kept popping her head between the seats like an attention-starved seven-year-old riding to the strip club with her parents.

Eventually, the strip malls, car lots, and chain restaurants became more and more sparse and the road became less lit. We turned onto the road where Victory lives and began our descent into the hollow. I’ve always thought that the last mile to get to Victory is nearly as scary as the haunted house itself and I always try to guess how many prom dates have been murdered in those woods. Because what else is there to do in Elizabeth? I mean, other than watch their sucky high school football team?

Victory’s website hadn’t been updated for 2008, but all of the haunted house listings swore that it was open. WELL THEY LIED. I mean, I never expect a crowd when I pull up, but I do expect that the front door will at least not have a board nailed to it. It was most certainly closed, nailed up tighter than Jesus. I stared at it for a few seconds, mouth agape, refusing to accept it. This was the longest-running haunted house in Pittsburgh! For thirteen motherfucking years I was harrassed and heckled in those pitch-black corridors. I went there while I was pregnant, even, no fetus was going to hold ME down. (I was only two months pregnant, chill.)

This was the place that had unrelenting chainsaw action. One of my friends fell running from him up basement steps and he showed no mercy. She was crying her fat face off and I laughed and laughed because I could run faster. The scariest part was that most of it was squeezing through cramped hallways, hands held out as feelers. You’d always end up groping one of the monsters and then they’d snarl in your ear and you’d pee your granny pants and shout “OMFG LET ME OUT.”

My favorite memory of Victory was from 1999 when I was nineteen. I had gone there with my friends Brian and Heather, and after a traumatic run-through which featured Heather very dramatically dry-heaving from the overly ambitious fog machines in the basement (the basement, might I add, made the basement in Blair Witch Project look like Candy Land), we had a horrific run-in with two chainsaw guys in the parking lot. The lot is a small gravel area across from the haunted school, at the base of a wooded hillside. As we approached my car, one of the chainsaw guys came barrelling at me from the woods, and the other had come from across the street. Brian and Heather had already got in the car, and of course they thought it would be fucking hysterical, a real lovely story for the hobos in the soup kitchen, to lock me out of the car. So I’m running around this dark, mostly empty parking lot, punching myself in the crotch to keep from panic-pissing, two chainsaws buzzing against my billowing hair. Brian actually had a change of heart and unlocked my door, but showed no mercy in ridiculing me.

Angry at Brian and shaken up by the chase, I tried to make a hasty exit. Unfortunately, the parking lot is poorly lit and I didn’t notice the car that was parked perpendicularly behind me. I sure noticed it after the sickening crunch it made as my bumper violated its side, that’s for sure. And of course, it would belong to one of the chainsaw guys, who happened to witness the whole thing. His chainsaw dropped and he flung his mask onto the gravel, then stood in front of my car, furiously miming for me to  get out. The next hour was spent waiting for a cop to come (he insisted on having a report filed), me sobbing and repeatedly asking if I was going  to jail, and being reamed out by a very pissed off car owner. At one point, the other chainsaw guy sat with me in my car, consoling me by saying, “Don’t let him get to you. He’s a mother fucker to everyone. He made me feel better and if Heather wasn’t in the backseat, I probably would have given him a handjob for his effort.

But last Saturday night, there were no other cars in that dark gravel parking lot for me to batter. I blame all these big commercial haunts that are popping up. The ones that herd you through like cattle in groups of fifteen and just aren’t scary.

Luckily, one of the fire departments in a neighboring town has been putting one together in the basement of a school gym for the past three years. It’s a little too short, but it has promise and some legitimate scares (NIffer almost had a heart attack because not only were there clowns, but a midget one at that), some horrific encounters with Freddy Krueger and Leatherface, and a robed man with a needling eastern European accent of some sort that kept reappearing to heckle us.

Christina and I went to this same one last year and I seriously was near-tears because the whole thing made me feel uncomfortable and they literally have you walking through small rooms in this damp cement basement and I kept shouting WHAT IF THIS IS REAL AND WE DON’T MAKE IT OUT OMFG DID I TELL CHOOCH I LOVED HIM BEFORE I LEFT??

Unfortunately, there was no Michael Myers.I have recurring fantasies of a chase ending with an erotic rape romp so my thighs quake subsequently every time I see him. Michael left me with a wet hot memory at Cheeseman’s haunted hayride two weekends ago, at least, when he had me pressed up against a wall in an empty hallway and we were face to Shatner-mask. He kept trying to shoo Janna away and I really believe that a child could have been conceived that night if Janna had left. Either that or the knife that was so dangerously near to my cheek was real and Michael and his friends would be dining on Erin Appledale flapjacks the next morning.

Anyway, I really hope whoever was behind that mask was at least of legal age, because his jock bumped against me several times and I had urges, mighty urges, to cup his ballsack. Scandelous.

And that’s how I like my haunted houses.

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 12:42 I need a sidekick. One that doubles as the voice of reason. #
• 13:31 @buenomexicana sidekicks don’t live 5 hrs away. #
• 15:23 I want to spray paint HOLY SHIT on the bathroom wall but I can only imagine how Henry will react. All the more reason to forge ahead. #
• 15:51 The bait shop has a poster of the Marlboro Man adhered to the storefront. #
• 15:52 I leave early for work so I can stalk a bait shop. This is what my life sans college has been reduced to. #
• 15:56 Wish the bait shop would stalk ME. Though I think if I come here often enough, I’m bound to witness a murder. #
• 16:43 The AP lady says she likes Mondays bc its a chance to start fresh. She’s the kind who’s likely to wind up gutted & strung from a tree. #
• 20:45 Dm fondabruises THANK YOU!! The coupons came today! #
• 23:28 What kind of shoddy restaurant doesn’t offer PIE???! #
• 23:30 When our waitress said “we have a lovely dessert menu” she was either being sarcastic or talking about the font. #
• 23:46 twitpic.com/flxi – THIS douche is here again. #

---

• 11:35 Bank teller caught tailend of my convo where I said “splash some blood on the dress, rip the ends up a little”. #
• 11:35 With wide eyes she told me to have a nice weekend. #
• 11:36 I guess she knew I wasn’t talking about a halloween costume #
• 22:18 My all-time favorite haunted house didn’t open this year. Will shed blood from my wrist in its honor. #

---

• 11:06 Still wanting to donate some of my calf muscles. #
• 12:16 I think I found the perfect prom dress. #
• 13:02 http://twitpic.com/fwgp – Like they’ve never seen a menu before. #
• 15:35 Aside from henry & I breaking up for the 3262nd time & my grandma going to the hospital, this weekend was the limit, like really swell. #
• 20:11 My bro and his friends have been stealing shit from my mom’s neighbor’s yard and hiding it in her garage. She thinks she’s going to jail. #
• 20:30 23: amount of times my mom has referenced YouTube, MySpace, and BlogTV in the 20 min I’ve been here. #

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Henry must really love me because he won this super fly fucking phenomenal piece of 1980’s shit for me on Ebay. He must have known that the production of my thirtieth birthday party would certainly have to be halted if I didn’t have the perfect prom dress to wear. I feel like this dress needs to send a telegram to Uggs, demanding its name back. The only way it could be any uglier (aside from the fact that it will have a one Erin Appledale sausaged into it) would be if I wore it WITH Uggs.Seriously, someone originally paid $230 for this slipshod collage of metallic taffeta and lace.

Yes, my birthday is in July and yes planning has already begun. It is going to be big because I’m tired of having sad and pathetic birthdays and everyone is invited. There will be tombstone cookies! THERE WILL BE (MIGHT BE) A PHOTO BOOTH! THERE WILL BE BLOOD!

Even though we’re being graced by an Indian summer and it was nearly eighty degrees yesterday, it was still a perfect day for taking some photos of Blake and Chooch: autumn edition. 

My only intention was to stuff a preppy sweater vest on my small child, dump him in a mound of leaves, and have him behave accordingly for the camera. Except my small child doesn’t behave accordingly for the camera. He doesn’t ever stop moving. So instead I took a thousand photos of Henry’s large child playing in the leaves. Blake managed to wrestle him down for one or two shots at least.

I always keep the animal masks in the trunk of the car, because you just never know when the urge might arise to hold up the corner porn shop as a giraffe.

But I’ve used them so many times now in photos that I wasn’t planning on utilizing them yesterday. Then I turned around and saw this pint-sized horror stumbling toward me.

It’s almost like the masks were swirling around my face, whispering, “Don’t deny us.” So then I was like, “Ok fine, it doesn’t ever get old.

Let’s do this shit.”

Christina said, “I like this one because the background looks so happy.” I considered that opinion for a fleeting second and then countered with, “Really?

Because I feel like a little girl was murdered in that greenhouse in the background, seventy years ago. And that’s why I like it.”

One of the cemetery groundsmen took a time out and perched on a tombstone to watch how this would unravel. It kind of made me have stagefright. Until I remembered that I wasn’t on a stage.

This is actually an improvement upon Christina’s natural look. I bought her that necklace by the way because true friends encourage suicide.

He’s late, obviously.

Blake has cool hair. For a rabbit.

~~All the more.~~

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 16:33 So obsessed with bait shops. Want to interview bait shop owner. Do not know why. #
• 10:17 I want to start my own bowling team. #
• 10:17 Is bowling hard to learn? #

• 13:41 How did I never learn how to cut a goddamn apple? #
• 09:46 Accidentally lingered on Barney for a second too long. Chooch yelled “hey who’s that?” b4 settling in to watch, big smile on face. FUCK. #
• 11:56 My devil & angel aren’t perched on my shoulders; they’re sumo wrestling in my brain. #

• 10:29 Just whiddled a fiddle from a dead man. Now to find a nun to play it. #

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My internal angel and devil are constantly locking horns with wings inside my head, but this month the angel has prevailed. To reward her, I’m donating 20% of all my Etsy sales this month to Breast Friends, starting today.

My daughter lives above a BAIT SHOP??

One of my favorite movie quotes is from a 1980’s b-movie called Back to the Beach. I’m not sure if that was the start of it, but I’ve long been infatuated with bait shops. I’ve never been in one, I’ve never even gone fishing. But I’m obsessed with the gritty imagery that my mind conjures when I think of a bait shop.

Sometimes, I accompany Henry to his place of employment. On the way there, we pass this dingy shanty-like bait shop marked by a hand-written sign that boasts “Live bait. Worms. Fishing Suply.” I’ve been staring dreamily at this bait shop for four years now, and not once in those four years has anyone corrected the spelling of “suply.” It’s endearing.

My new job is a block away from Henry’s, and the fact that I drive past it every day on my way there might just be a coincidence to some; but to me, it’s kind of like a stripper swirling down a pole, her pasties flashing IT’S A SIGN in bright pink LED.

Bait shop, you’re calling my name. I do not know why. Maybe I was a fisherman in a past life, or bait, or maybe I was killed and buried behind a bait shop. But what I do know is that I want to go there, talk to its proprietors. (I believe it’s a husband-wife force; I saw the husband weed-wacking yesterday and I’m unsure of which hurt the weeds more: the brutal annhiliation served up by the weedwacker, or the vicious verbal rampage the husband appeared to be hatefully funneling at them.)

I had this great idea that I should go there and ask to shadow them for an hour or two, get up to my elbows in bait shop grease. Find out what makes a person go into the baiting biz – carrying the family torch? Addicted to the slithery squishiness of worms? Easy to snag a job after bait school?

I’d probably lie and say it’s for school (my classic excuse) so that I can take pictures of them, too. And maybe I’ll get lucky and snag a sound byte from this seven foot homeless man who loiters in the vicinity. You all know how much I love the homeless, maggots in their beards and all.

But Henry thinks this is a horrible idea. Like, they’ll be so aghast and threatened by my request that they’ll fillet me on the spot and sell my toes as bait. Of course, that’s the kind of diarrhea-inducing anxiety that makes me want to do it all the more.  I have this sick desire to do things that make me uncomfortable, and then complain and whine about it to Henry.

Plus, the bait shop sits haphazardly right above a river bank, so it’d give me an opportunity to be within feet of the sickening river, maybe conquer a fear or two.  Or see a dead body washed ashore, who knows.

Oh, and there’s a pier in their backyard, and I’m kind of obsessed with that shit, too. I don’t know, all these things add up to a big cream-filled YES to me.

EDIT: I just found out why Henry doesn’t want me going there. It seems that the husband-owner stepped in front of Henry’s car one day and yelled at him for going too fast (I asked Henry how he would be able to stand in front of our car if Henry was driving that fast, and Henry said “Exactly.”) so now Henry’s dickie shrivels in fear at the thought of the bait shop.

I really want to change my name to Erin Appledale. I mean, consider how many Erin Kellys there are in the world. There were TWO OTHER Erin Kellys going to Pitt the same time I was. So that’s at least three Erin Kellys that I know of in this city alone.

Besides, Erin Appledale sounds so down-to earth, like I’m someone you’d approach without hesitation and suddenly find your arms wrapped around my back. Then I’d pluck a lollipop from my Longaberger basket and tweak your cheek.

So the other day, when Henry was putting together the lamest portfolio* you ever did see, and he asked, “What do you want to call this?” I was like, “Duh. Erin Appledale’s Ugly Photography.” He left out the “ugly” but kept the Appledale. And I stared at it for a good long while, making love to its sweet farmland charm.

I think people will take to the change. Maybe not my family. My dad might be a little scorned at how disposable his surname is. And besides, it’s been two months now since this seed was planted and I haven’t changed my mind yet. That’s huge.

It was either that or Applebottom.

* So, I placed this ad on Craigslist, offering to take free publicity shots of local bands. I figure, it’s a hobby that calms my nerves and (sort of) keeps me out of trouble, so it’s a win/win. Plus, I’m not a professional and would not feel comfortable charging poor bands for something that I only want to do for fun. Like, a photoshoot with a purpose.

Then a local hiphop group answered my ad and I was like, “Oh shit, this is scary.

Now I really have to do this” but they asked to see my portfolio and I was like, “Oh yeah, I’ll get that right to you. HENRY MAKE ME A PORTFOLIO??!!!” And that is why I now have a portfolio for no good reason.

Almost a year ago, I made the big scary leap from LiveJournal – my home since 2001 – to my own website. It was dark and lonely for awhile, and then there was the incident where Henry deleted some of my posts and I plugged his asshole with a stick of dynamite, but then everything calmed down and blogging became fun again. There’s not much interaction on here, as opposed to LiveJournal where I had a crowded friends list several years in the making, but I do like the fact that I feel less censored, like I can reveal more of myself. I found myself caught up in a clique that was all about who could be the bigger douche on the Internet; all about e-sucking the most dicks. I didn’t like that. It’s less about popularity now, and that’s a good thing. LiveJournal was like the devil to me.

However, sometimes I think, “It would be kind of cool to know who is actually reading this shit.” So please, if you read, let me know. It doesn’t mean I’ll expect you to be an active commentor from here to eternity. I won’t seek you out for bone marrow someday. Just give me a little shout out, tell me what you like about my blog, what you hate about my blog, what you’d like to see more of, etc.

For instance, I was thinking the other day that I am probably going to make my Tweets private, since I only post them here for my own posterity anyway. I imagine they must be annoying to read.

So please, say hello. Tell me a fun fact about yourself. If you have a blog too, let me know so I can add you to my paltry blogroll.

Give me a good soup recipe that I can slide under the locked steel kitchen door for Henry.

(If you’re reading this on the LJ feed, can you please comment over here for this one?

I don’t always remember to go back and check the feed for comments! I’m a pain in the ass, I know. Henry reminds me daily! Sometimes HOURLY!)

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 12:51 A stationwagon just drove past and Chooch yelled HEARSE. #
• 13:43 Some lady just asked “omg is that jimmy buffet?” Yeah lady. Playing for 15 ppl at the apple fest in Small Town, PA. #
• 13:53 twitpic.com/eqtb – Certain this mans dinner will probably be decomposing flesh. #
• 14:09 We’ve been here for over an hour and there are no masticated apple delicacies lounging in my belly. #
• 15:03 Looking at cute elderly couples, I wondered if henry & I would last that long, then realized he’ll be dead long before I turn elderly. #
• 17:42 I hate that my family has never tried to get to know me. Apparently, I’m not a good time-investment. #
• 18:19 Henrys homemade soups are the chains by which I’m bound to this relationship. He should open a soup kitchen. #  *********
• 10:40 I’m going to be photographing a local hiphop group because apparently I’m not satisfied until stress causes my brain to smoke. #

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********* I’m not lying. Henry throws a bunch of root vegetables in a pot, makes them fornicate with some barley and vegetable stock, and the next thing you know, the thickest, most comforting October slop is delivered in my very own kitchen. Henry also makes a fabulous pumpkin soup; it’s so delicious that I almost wanted to use it as an enema. Maybe minus the cinnamon croutons, though.

I’m trying to get him to open a soupery. A soupfé. A souptessen. All the desserts would be in soup-form. They could look like their famous soup counterparts, like  French onion, and served in those little pot things with marshmallow melted and draped over the top like cheese. Or clam chodwer could have clams, but they’d be suspended in molten white chocolate and nougat instead, topped with chocolate oyster crackers.  

Will be meeting with a construction team soon.

Today we took Captain Vulgarity to the Apple Fest in the ultra conservative farmlands of Western Pennsylvania. One has to park in various fields several miles from where all the apple action goes down and board chool buses doubling as shuttles. Our bus was pretty quiet, and the whole way there I sat with clenched muscles and pinched nerves, praying that Chooch wouldn’t start snarling spontaneous “Asshole“s to the elderly couple adjacent to his seat. The excitement of being on a school bus for the first time seemed to work effectively as a cuss retardant, thank the fucking Lord, so I was able to focus on the adorable lesbian couple in front of me, mouthing along to West End Girls and kissing the top of each other’s heads. Seriously, I wanted to paint a cupcake couple painting for those lucky assholes. (I don’t know WHERE Chooch gets that word.) I tossed a few resentful glares over my shoulder at Henry, who does NOT mouth the words to awesome synthpop songs or kiss me lovingly atop my crown. BUT MY GIRLFRIEND DOES.

If you like kettle corn, the apple fest is a fine place to spend a Sunday. If you like personalized wood-carved toy flutes and crafts made with puffy paint, then the apple fest could potentially complete your mantle collection. Do you like face paint? YOU WILL LOVE THE APPLE FEST. How about the tones of Jimmy Buffet cover bands colliding with whining kids and the grinding horror of chainsaws? Then the apple fest is like one mother of an orgasm contained on one whopping acre.  Is the tied and bound body of your latest victim incomplete without an apple gag? You can buy ’em by the BUSHEL at the apple fest!

For someone who is not interested in any of the above (the last one, maybe someday), my typical I Hate The World venom was sort of tempered. I only said, “This is so fucking lame, ” once. ONCE. (I’m either growing up or someone plopped a Valium in my tea.) I had one goal, and one goal only: Eat some applelicious delicacies. Keep that pulled pork away from me.

We let Chooch go on some kiddie rides and molest some farm animals. (I saw a retarded man clap after he pet a sheep and I seriously almost died. Between that and the drugfreeworld.org commercials, I’m wondering what the fuck is going on with my heart-frost and estrogen levels.)

Ninety percent of the apple-humpers there were sporting Steelers jerseys and I felt slightly angry about it. But then I saw THREE WHOLE PEOPLE in Penguins shirts and I felt less alone. Chooch cheered when he saw one of those people, too, and I shouted, “That’s my boy.” Then I looked up to the heavens and mouthed “Thank you” when Chooch didn’t tack a gritty “Asshole!” to the end of his cheer.

We followed some shoddy and ill-placed signs for a hayride, hoping to keep Chooch’s attention masturbated since it was growing close to his naptime and his ornery side was beginning to peak. The designated area for the apple fest just isn’t large enough to hold all the fruity wonders and delights that are to be had, so the activities and vendors tend to leak down onto a nearby street. The hayride depot (I don’t know what I’m talking about) was situated next to a church. Henry pointed to a sign on its steps and said, “Let’s go see that.” Because my eyes are as bad as my ears (if not worse), I read it as “Come see the trans.” I was intrigued that a church would have transvestites on display for us hee-haw apple-folk. “How progressive,” I said out loud.

But it was just some model train display.

In the church’s basement, a bevy of booths were set up. As I walked past a stand of necklaces, I accidentally made eye contact with its purveyor, who flitted her hand and said, “They’re made from paper mache!” I fake-smiled and said, “OH OK” and hurried along before she compelled me with the Holy Spirit and Mod Podge. It stunk really bad in there, like church craft fairs often do. Some kind of horrible odor bomb of cooked cabbage, Avon perfume and shitty diapers. Chooch began acting like an orphan who was force-fed caffeine capsules and then turned loose on the world, so we yanked him out of there in time to go on the lamest hayride ever, where I was seated across from some older God-fearing woman who glared at me every time I looked up at her and her teenage daughter who had a broken foot and chowed on a bag of kettlecorn while staring dispondantly off into the horizon. Chooch only said “asshole” once, but no one heard him over the put-put of the tractor’s engine.

The tractor-driver let the wagon glide to a rest on top of a hill, where our screams would be heard by no one for miles and miles and miles. Slowly, he turned around, and as though he were in some sort of cigar and whiskey-flavored fugue, he slurred, “Six feet of snow….nothing but the moon in the sky….what do you think the view would be like up here?” No one seemed to know what to say, so I looked at Chooch and said awkwardly, “Pretty awesome, huh?

” The only other person who humored him with an answer was the God-fearing woman, who curtly replied, “Nice.” I kind of felt bad for that old hick; he was just trying to fire up some camaraderie, after all.

Maybe if he would have added flagellation stations and bleeding Stigmatas to the vision, God-Fearer would have been more excited.

There really wasn’t much to see out there. Several cows, but that novelty wears off pretty fucking fast, especially when Chooch got to pet pigs and sheep on the actual festival grounds. In fact, I’m not even certain the hayride was a part of the apple fest. It was probably just some neighboring farmer trying to make a quick buck because his crops sucked this year.

After that disaster of a hayride, I finally got to have some sugary apple slop. Standing in line, I was certain I wanted apple crisp, but as we got closer to the front, that apple pie looked simply to die for, so I changed my mind. Henry went with the apple crisp and we took our plates of fat and calories inside where some old broads were quilting on a raised platform, watching everyone eating at the tables. Awkward.

After two bites of my pie, I stole a bite of Henry’s apple crisp, deemed it tastier than my pie, and arranged for a switch.

“Good thing I know you so well,” Henry grumbled. “I was going to get pie myself, but I figured you would be disappointed and wish you had ordered the crisp.

” It’s a good thing, having someone studying my indecisiveness so thoroughly since 2001. He’s somehow always one step ahead of me.

After that, we got in line  to board a bus back to the lot. Some older gent, who took his job way too seriously, shouted commands at us before he’d let us get on. “THE BUS IS APPROACHING. BEGIN FOLDING YOUR STROLLERS NOW. GET IN THE BUS AS FAST AS YOU CAN AND PLEASE FILL UP THE SEATS STARTING AT THE BACK OF THE BUS FIRST.” A hearty brow-swipe followed, and then he stepped to the side to let us through. I’m certain he was reliving the good old days of the Korean War.

We were the first ones on and I was determined to follow instructions.

That guy seemed like the type to march aboard the bus and throw out the rule-benders by their ears. So I plunked down in the very last seat, just like my friend Rosa.

Five minutes later, the bus was pulling away, and there were only about ten of us on there. An old man in front of me mumbled, “He was so adamant that we fill up the back of the bus, and there’s hardly anyone on here.”

IT WAS FUNNY BUT I GUESS YOU HAD TO BE THERE.

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 19:42 My boss has a Richard Marx ringtone. I can’t front though, I’ve been known to power lip-sync to some Hazard #
• 11:18 Shilling Halloween cards to the willing: tinyurl.com/4mdbjk #
• 16:34 Was just told I can keep a book at my desk for when its slow. Heaven, I think I’m feeling you up right now. #
• 17:44 My boss asked me why I’m so dudded up. I had to doublecheck to see if I accidentally put on my Versace sheath and Manolo Blahniks. #
• 17:44 Nope, just jeans and boots. #
• 21:52 Henrys watching iCarly with a smile on his face. #

• 09:54 Desperately seeking: secluded cabin to escape to. Preferrably in woods that are home to chainsaw-wielding psychopath. #
• 17:07 Blake just gave me a piece a gum and said “since my dad doesn’t buy you anything.” #
• 19:37 About to go on hayride. Blakes nipples will protect us. #
• 20:20 Fuck, Michael Myers. You get me hot every time. #
• 20:44 My kid just called Jesus an asshole. #
• 21:38 Chooch sure can quiet a restaurant. #
• 21:44 I make janna sit next to Chooch. That way, when he screams asshole, ppl think she’s the shitty mother. #
• 22:17 Why’s everyone q-tipping their dickholes over these shitty fireworks? Happy fucking birthday already, Pittsburgh. #
• 00:37 The age difference between Henry and me has seemingly doubled. #
• 11:47 We’re taking Captain Vulgarity to the apple festival. I’m bracing myself. #
• 11:53 A lot of apples are going to get their feelings hurt today. #

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My new job has been really great so far. I’m working in the evenings as a biller for a large shipping company. I won’t name names, but you know them. There are four other billers, all older women, who only work two nights a week. I like working with older women because they mother me, and we all know how I like that. When I first met one of those women, I was immediatley charmed by her bubbling, down-home personality. Then she sat back down at her desk and asked, “Where’s my clipboard? Where’s my FUCKING clipboard?” It was awesome.

However, it only took one evening there for all the flashbacks to come pouring in. This environment has so many striking similarities to a job I had in my early twenties – the Bad Job, the one that gave me no choice but to retreat to the EEOC, the one that left me with a stuttering problem, an obliterated self-esteem, an inability to enter the workforce for almost three years. Just like at that place, I’m working in a testosterone-driven environment. I’m working around drivers with bad tempers, foul mouths, and inappropriate behavior. I’m being trained by a woman who reminds me so much of my old office-mate at the Bad Job, that I have to shake off the flashbacks and snap back to the present.. I’m listening to the squeal of fork lift wheels and dock workers hounding us to hurry up with the bills. I’m listening to my boss shout “Where you AT??” from the dispatch room and suddenly I’m sitting at my old desk, in my old leather chair, thumbing through invoices.

I never, in these past four years, thought the day would come when I would find myself missing a place that has plagued me with countless nightmares and panic attacks. But I do. I miss the drivers and the meat cutters and one of the salesmen, and I miss kicking the copier and being a perfectionist when making the weekly flyer, even though I knew no one gave a shit about its aesthetic appeal. Sometimes I even miss working with Henry – that’s the place we met. My new job is making me nostalgic for the things that didn’t suck about that job. And there were a lot of things that didn’t suck. Basically, the only things sucking were the owners of that job, and the unfortunate part was that it was my life on which they were sucking.

So last Saturday, I decided I was ready to go back. Four years seemed like a long enough time to heal, and I really needed some sort of closure. So Henry called the office that morning, made sure the owners weren’t there that day, and we stopped by with Chooch. The only person working that day whom I knew was Gary, my favorite salesman. There were days when it seemed like Gary, out of everyone in that office, was the only one on my side. He saw firsthand the way I was treated. Sometimes he was treated the same way.

Gary let us into the upstairs offices and we sat around in the break room, catching up. Everything smelled the same: walls embedded with the lingering aroma of too many chickens fried, too many cigarettes puffed, sweaty stench of too many loitering drivers. Everything looked the same: putrid hue of puke splayed across the walls, microwave circa 1972, coffee-stained counters, misspelled names on lockers.  Everything seemed the same, except for my office: walls bare of Robert Smith’s mug, comics I drew out of mad cocktails of rage and boredom, magazine articles of my favorite bands. My old office is bland now, no personality.

Mainly, I sat there in the break room and smiled, tried to act like it wasn’t bothering me. But it was fucking surreal and brutal, like being donkey-kicked in the belly by a gnome on steroids. So I sat there, listening to Henry and Gary dish about the meat business, and I looked around at all the lockers and considered slipping notes into the ones of the drivers I knew, but for some reason, I couldn’t make myself walk into my old office to get a post-it. For some reason.

Chooch ran down the hallway at one point, forcing me to follow him. He stopped right in front of the door to the conference room, where my replacement was sitting at the computer. We made eye contact, and time was suspended in a horrifying abyss, like a body hung up by hook-pierced flesh. I smiled tightly and gave him a curt “Hello” then whisked Chooch back down the hall.

We left after Gary was summoned to the cooler. In the car, I promptly put on my sunglasses so Henry wouldn’t see that I was crying. It was harder than I imagined, and the nightmares have returned. But I just had to know, I had to see it again. Like an ex-boyfriend that you need to see for closure, but end up seeing his new girlfriend too and it just tears the wound open all over again.

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 15:30 Drugfreeworld.org commercials make me want to die, motherfuck. #
• 17:21 I get praised a lot at my job. The Leo in me purrs. #
• 20:34 My boss calls his girlfriend “babydoll”. OH, HENRY!!!!!???!! #

• 12:43 “That’s great, Erin!” “Good job, Erin!” “I love you, Erin!” – phrases that will cause the earth to implode if ever uttered by my mom. #
• 15:54 Blog comment from Craig’s mom + big fat rainbow en route to work = two great nightmare negators. #
• 02:29 It seems I work with a herd of republicans. They’re all hoping Palin doesn’t fuck up at the Debate. I laughed. #
• 02:38 What, my tweets don’t rate, Twitter? #
• 09:55 I had a dream that ben jorgenson was my boyfriend and we made out A LOT. #
• 10:00 Maybe its a sign that I need to dump henry for a scene kid. One of legal age. If those exist. #
• 11:46 My son is a professional pop-up book demolisher. #
• 11:57 Chooch just pointed to an ad for Girls Next Door and asked in earnest, “I goin’ there?” He’s earning his Man Badge early. #

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Rainy Saturdays usually make me miserable and grouchy, but this past Saturday turned into one of those days where every single thing had me squatting in laughter. I really needed a day like that.

First, Blake and Janna joined Henry, Chooch and me for a quick jaunt to Bloomfield’s Little Italy Days. It’s essentially just a small street fair, with a portion of the road blocked off and stuffed with food vendors and craft booths.

Henry’s mood soured immediately when we passed a voter registration booth with clip-boarded volunteers doling out Obama stickers. Too bad for Henry, but the rest of us like Obama so we made an executive decision to slap supportive flair to our chests. Henry continued pushing Chooch down the block while we stood around and fraternized with the enemy.

It wasn’t until later that I realized they said, “Italian Americans for Obama.” I scoffed and said, “Great, we’re not even Italian!” but Janna said, “Well, actually, I am.” I don’t know why, but it gave me more incentive to make fun of her. And not because I’m some closet racist plotting to bomb Italy. I love Italy! I love those fiesty pasta-slingin’ peeps! It’s just that it’s Janna. And judging Janna is my #1 hobby. I think she has come to realize, after nearly 20 years, that this is her role in life. Which is why, later, when she asked for Splenda for her iced tea, I took it upon myself to make her a sweetener bomb (Splenda, Equal, and SweetnLow). And she drank that shit too. BECAUSE IT’S HER PLACE ON EARTH.

Henry wouldn’t buy us cookies or brownies and Janna wouldn’t buy me jewels, and the clouds were black and heavy with precipitation, but nothing, NOTHING could ruin Little Italy Days for me. And oh, the sights I would have missed had I let some unfortunate weather and stingy asshole furrow my brow!

I might have missed this sweetheart of a nun, with her adorable hell-damning visage. And then I would not have known such lovely edelweiss fashion still existed in these States.

Bloomfield’s own Elvis-Wayne Newton hybrid might have flown under my radar.

And I wouldn’t find out about Gene Simmons going marachi until VH1 decided to make a show about it. Also, that waving broad is exactly the type of classy dame I strive to grow into. Imagine the lamé she has packed in her closet.

And if I had let Henry’s conservativism cloud my personal sunshine, I wouldn’t have thought to subject Blake to yet another of my impromptu photo ops.

We only putzed around the streets of Bloomfield for an hour before Henry herded us back to the car. He later complained that he had wanted to stop and fill up on the many Italian concessions waiting to bloat bellies, and when I asked him why he didn’t indulge his pretty little desires, he muttered something about “all you damn kids acting like idiots” or some such completely absurd variation. I know it was the whole Obama sticker thing. He felt left out and out-numbered.

As we drove through the back streets of Bloomfield, I caught a glimpse of a scene so horrific, it forced me to shriek loud at a volume high enough to make every occupant in the car jolt in their seats.

“WHAT?” Henry shouted, probably wondering if he had driven over the unconscious lump of a homeless man blitzed from chugging turpentine in a boot.

“Something was going on back there. There were two army guys holding GUNS and approaching a house!” I cried.

“Are you sure they weren’t cops?” Henry asked, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

“No, they were definitely armies.” This made everyone laugh and I was angry because this was a very serious situation. “We have to go back there and save a life!” I screamed.

So Henry did. He actually turned around, but not without lip, until we drove past the street in question.

As I shouted, “THERE THEY ARE!” Henry, Janna, and Blake (in unison so harmonious it could have been sung by angels on high) groaned, “They’re playing PAINT BALL.” And we all laughed.

After that, we dicked around on Mt. Washington, taking Chooch on his first ride on the incline. It started raining really hard by that point, so we went to dinner at King’s, where Chooch burped out “Asshole!” with all the charm of a Tourette’s sufferer, and Blake and I reminded Janna repeatedly that she wasn’t a part of our family. It was more fun than doing a speedball in the Champagne Room.

To add a dollop of whipped cream to a day full of giddy antics and newly sprouted grays on Henry, Blake declared that we should make cookies.

“Oh, we should!” I encouraged. “STD cookies!”

Henry got all foot-planty and spat, “If I’m making cookies, then YOU’RE going to the store to buy what we need.” Thank God he sent Blake along to make sure I didn’t fuck shit up. You know me, send me out for flour and I come back with a non-descript bag of dildos.

So while Henry slaved away on the kitchen, Blake performed serious Google image searches on various STDs while I bossed around Janna and basically sat around being cute. Then Henry realized he didn’t have corn syrup or some shit for the frosting, so while he was out we had a tea party and it was awesome because it was yet another thing that Henry wasn’t invited to. During our tea party, Blake ridiculed Janna’s selection of Earl Grey by saying that, “Earl Grey is for assholes.” My selective hearing heard, “Let’s race for abstinence” which had me squatting on the floor, squeezing back pee drops. Of course, no one else thought it was that hilarious, which only made it harder for me to not need to slip into a fresh pair of Depends. At some point, we were talking about egg harvesting and I tried to convince Blake that it was as easy as lounging in a tubful of ice, wielding a melon baller, and then creating a Craiglist post. Hopefully, he will teach all the girls at school this method.

My mug, Skelly, indulges in some delicious diseases fellatio. Look for it in the December issue of Bon Appetit.

For my cookies, I mainly stuck with the theme of Vaginal Maladies, such as menstruation and yeast infection. This one, Popped Cherry with Lone Tear Drop (added for extra sentiment), was my personal favorite. Lost virginity never tasted so delicious.

Hey, there’s some yeast in your pink. Or perhaps a fresh load. Whatever whets your appetite.

Later, I laughed at the realization of what a great role model I must be. Send your teens to my house, Parents, where we make jokes of serious matters and look at pictures of diseased vaginas.